Warlock Dowling and the South Downs Summer
by ShootingArrows
Summary: The Dowling family faces political scandal in the year following the not-pocalypse and Warlock is both abandoned by his friends and desperate to avoid returning to America. So he ends up staying with Crowley and Aziraphale in their South Downs cottage.


As the days turned from weeks to months after Crowley and Aziraphale returned from giving Heaven and Hell their respective Cease and Desist notices, a great many things changed. Without the pressure of "deeds of the day" and angelic inquiries, they could fraternize with much greater freedom and frequency. Things escalated from the Ritz to Real Estate they were now the proud owners of a cottage in the South Downs.

It was a fairly normal house, excepting for the second floor library that was far larger than the architecture ought to have allowed and for the luxurious greenhouse in the large yard. Being on the edge of town and at the end of the road, it had as much privacy as one could get while still being in easy distance of most of the town's amenities.

Adam visited fairly frequently. Sometimes accompanied only by Dog, sometimes with one friend, and occasionally with all of the Them. He cited their proximity to the seaside as his motive, but his visits continued despite the shift of seasons.

Crowley wasn't completely certain how he and Aziraphale were explained away in the minds of Adam's parents, so he left any answers as noncommittal as possible. He was fairly sure that Mrs. Young thought one of them was an ex-coworker friend of Mr. Young, and that Mr. Young thought they were old family friends of Mrs. Young. Both seemed too polite to admit they had no idea what the connection was. Adam certainly had influence and Crowley was naturally charming, allegedly to help with temptations, and Aziraphale was angellicaly trustworthy. So they let Adam visit with only a day's notice and the agreement of one his parents seeing him onto the train and one of them meeting him at the station. It all settled into a pleasant rhythm.

On a balmy thursday evening in late May, the year after the world not ending, Crowley, or more specifically, Nanny Ashtoreth, got an email at 10:40 pm. The late hour where desperate ideas seem more meritorious and decisions made from a day's worth of mulling are acted upon. It was from Warlock Dowling.

It started "Dear Ms. Nanny Antonia Ashtoreth," The wording was very formal and polite, a little overly so in many places, but the boy had been taught letter writing by Aziraphale so that was to be expected.

Warlock Dowling blustered through the first paragraph, hoping that his old nanny was enjoying her retirement and other pleasantries. The second paragraph had the meat of the email and a lot that Crowley could read in between the lines. It seemed that Warlock had a dilemma. His father was facing political scandal and a hearing with the Senate back in America. His mother was accompanying him to help field the press and provide a traditional family values united spousal front. Either that or she was considering divorce. They hadn't decided which would salvage more of either of their careers.

Warlock's point was that he desperately did not want to spend a miserable summer in America being ignored by his busy parents, hidden from the press, asked questions about things he wasn't aware of, or ridiculed for his family. So couldn't he please stay with his retired nanny for the summer months, he could probably convince his parents to pay and he would be on his best behavior. He just needed to stay with someone before he returned to boarding school in the fall and his British friends' parents did not want to associate with his family right now.

Crowley was considering simply ignoring the email. Nanny Ashtoreth was not known for her proficiency with technology and it had been years since she had taken care of the boy. But then he checked his other email. Warlock had sent and equally polite and beseeching request to Mr. Antoine, his former tutor. Crowley was beginning to sense a theme.

He opened a new browser and logged into Aziraphale's human email. It wasn't a matter of hacking, although Crowley was confident he could easily guess any password Aziraphale came up with, but Crowley had helped with every step of setting up the account and was the one to check it most frequently. Aziraphale could use an older computer, more through divine will than actual skill, but he had no memory for attending to such things as emails. On his own he would let his inbox stagnate for years at a time.

Brother Francis and Professor Fell received nearly copy-pasted requests. Crowley was beginning to wonder how many "last resort" contacts Warlock had if he and Aziraphale were actually four of them. And he was beginning to feel a tiny worm of guilt coiling in his gut.

The scandal had not happened from any kind of demonic influence as far as he was aware, but it had been found out during the recovery period from the Almost Apocalypse. The collectively memory loss had not quite matched up with computer timelines and the failed nuclear launch glitch had led to an in-depth examination of foreign computer connections. In a convoluted way Warlock's problems were caused by the antichrist fiasco and that was in a convoluted way caused by Crowley. That was all secondary to Crowley's main line of thought.

In addition to the many, many ways that Aziraphale and Crowley were opposites. Crowley, as much as he denied it, fell hard and fast for things. After all, he had decided he liked Aziraphale the moment he found out about the flaming sword. Aziraphale, on the other hand, had a general benevolent fondness for just about everything in the world and grew attached so gradually he himself rarely noticed until he suddenly realized he could not do without something. It took time and exposure and then absence, even temporarily, for him to realize how much something meant to him.

Crowley was fairly certain that in Aziraphale's eyes, Warlock had never passed beyond the general fondness the angel held for recurring minor players in his life. Like one of the ducks that lived at St. James park, he may be recognizable as an individual being and Aziraphale may want safety and happiness for him in a general sense, he was not actively an object of attention. Eleven years was just not long enough for Aziraphale. This was fine for Aziraphale's role in influencing the supposed antichrist, as the family gardener, he had regular contact with the boy, but it was in the form of brief interactions that stayed fairly detached. Later as tutors they had been equally present in specific professional role.

From the beginning, Crowley had been heavily involved with Warlock. He tried to limit his "evil" influence to a matching quantity as Aziraphale's "good" influence, and remain neutral the rest of the time. And there had been many long hours with the boy. He had carried him from diapers to bedtime stories and been as involved as his own mother. This was not entirely incidental.

Crowley, like many demons, was a schemer. Temptation was best accomplished through planning for and predicting future steps. And Crowley was very good at planning and foreseeing consequences and setting up contingency plans. As loathe as he was to admit it, his primary backup plan with the antichrist was to make the boy like him.

If the divine influence failed, and the boy turned out evil, hopefully Crowley would become part of the Prince of Hell's malevolent court. If the good side won out, perhaps the boy's dear nanny would be spared. Having the Antichrist's protection was just too alluring of a boon. So Crowley had filled his time with the boy not just with whispers of hellish power and infernal conquest, but also with tenderness and joy. Warlock had realized at a young age that while his mother loved him, she was far too busy to be sought after for every scrape and bruise or new lego craft. Instead it was Crowley who applied bandaids (the kind with cartoon characters on them) and praised the creativity of Warlock's creations. With the legos he would include the suggestion that one day Warlock would build his own empire. He did have a responsibility to push him to evil.

And so Crowley, loathe as he was to admit it even to himself, was not unattached to the boy. He had begged books on first aid off of Aziraphale when he had the sudden frightening realization that the boy could fall out of a tree or step on a nail or crack his head on a door and Crowley would not be able to just demonically intervene it better if there were witnesses. Even as a tutor he had been a close confidante of a boy surrounded by too many people who couldn't prioritize him.

Even if Warlock wasn't the antichrist and they had technically wasted eleven years on him, he was still a child and he was asking them for help. And Crowley rather liked kids.

They had already had Adam come visit multiple times. Were they really discarding one boy in favor of another simply because one was actually the antichrist. That seemed like a kind of unfair bias due to destiny and station that neither of them liked about their previous "sides". . Crowley told himself that he was not being soft and that the boy had political connections and this was all part of a greater scheme he would come up with later. Now he just had to convince Aziraphale.

"Angel." Aziraphale started with the mildly baffled expression he always held when untimely pulled from the enthralment of a book. He was in the tartan armchair on the other side of the fireplace from Crowley and his laptop, but he may as well have been in a different world.

"Angel, you remember Warlock?" That was the dumbest possible way to start this conversation but Aziraphale had that effect on Crowley's sauvity.

"Warlock? The alleged antichrist we spent a decade on? Yes, of course I remember him. It took discorporating to get the scent of frosting out of my clothes after his birthday -"

"Yes yes, that Warlock." Crowley cut him off before he could gain too much steam. "Well he's emailed us. Both of us. Both of both of us. He wants to escape his family's scandal and spend the summer with someone else."

"Well, hasn't he got friends? I seem to recall quite a few children flinging cake at me and ridiculing my magic act." Azirphale said cooly. Crowley groaned.

"You're not still on about that are you? Your act was abysmal even for human magic. Lucky they didn't do worse than a food fight. Anyways, his friends' parents won't take him because the Dowlings are in deep shit politically and they don't want to show any support of them. And, well, technically we got four requests. So…"

"But we already have Adam coming over every few weekends or so. And his 'Them' are coming in a fortnight. Do we really need another twelve year old around?"

"Exactly. We already have Adam come around, got a guest bedroom with spaceships and wallpaper and everything. Is it really fair that we don't extend the same courtesy to our first godchild?"

"Oh I don't know.I suppose..." Aziraphale was shaking his head with a guilty expression. "It's just that Adam is such a nice boy and Warlock is-"

"What? It's not like he's the antichrist."

"No dear, and that's on you." Crowley shot him a withering glare.

"Anyways, he's not that bad, and you could consider this an opportunity to push him towards the 'good' and I won't even try very hard to thwart you."

"Oh I suppose, if you feel so strongly about it." Aziraphale agreed, but Crowley was gathering a head of steam.

" I'm surprised he's still contacting us after we dropped him like a hot potato with no explanation. He doesn't know that he didn't fit into our expected plans for him. We can't just abandon him like he did something wrong just because he's not what we thought. Every adult in his life is just using him for some secret agenda they won't tell him about, us included, and -"

"_Crowley._" Aziraphale finally interjected. "Crowley, dear, I agreed. He can come. I suppose it is nice to have a young person around. Makes the passage of time matter."

"Right. Yeah. Good." Crowley, wind gone from his sails, simply blinked at Aziraphale and then looked at the laptop with a frown.

"Now we've just gotta decide 'who' responds to his request. Nanny or tutor. His parents might be more responsive to the female Nanny, but then it's been longer…"

"Maybe the tutor is best. Easier to explain my presence. Oh! We could even say that we met while employed by the Dowlings! Our whole torrid affair started because of Warlock." Aziraphale grew a pleased smile as he generated the fiction.

"This has been neither torrid nor an affair, but I suppose that's a workable cover story. Tutor it is." Crowley typed for a moment and sent an email back to Warlock.

Warlock Dowling was due for a summer that would change his life.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX  
warlock may be a little shit but he's crowley's little shit


End file.
